by Roy Vickers
Grenwood was stumped. A long silence was broken by a raspy chuckle from Raffen.
“I can do nothing to help you, Rhode!” The perpetual sneer gave emphasis to the words. “And for God’s sake stop trying to help me!”
On his way home, Grenwood churned it over. He can do nothing to help me! Nothing to help me!
His report to Jill escaped positive misrepresentation, but contained no reference to Raffen’s romantic disappointment.
“We have done all we can,” pronounced Jill. “We shall have to try and forget that he ever existed.”
To Grenwood that meant no more than leaving him out of the conversation. Raffen, he supposed, must be dipping into his capital. Dipping, not necessarily squandering. For a year or so, Grenwood did nothing about it, hoping that circumstances would again alter the perspective and give him another respite. He began to lose weight. During 1927, he tried a series of tortuous little enterprises to help Raffen by stealth, all doomed to futility. There was an elaborate mechanism by which a hard-up dentist was induced to employ Raffen at a salary, paid by Grenwood. It lasted a fortnight. Frequently he would sneak out to Hampstead to watch the end of the alley. Twice during 1928 he saw Raffen coming home but lacked the courage to accost him. Now and again, catching sight of his reflection in a shop window, he would pretend that he could see a scar on his own left cheek and his lip lifted in a perpetual sneer at himself.
“Darling, I’m afraid you’ll have to own up that you’re worrying about Gerald.”
“I know. I’m a fool.”
“A very dear fool! And a very brave man who is frightened of a shadow on the wall which he has made himself.”
“There’s no shadow on any wall!” he cried. “What’s behind all this, Jill?”
“Rhode, you’ve been—ill—for a long time. You mutter in your sleep—”
“What about?” He had to repeat it before she nerved herself to answer:
“That fire at Charchester.”
“What do I say about it? About—the fire?” She could feel the words being dragged out of him.
“Nothing coherent.”
“Then what has Gerald been saying to you?”
“Oh, Rhode! As if I would see Gerald without telling you!” She went on: “I’ve read the official report. It told me only what I knew already. I know that no one can tell me anything about that fire except you, and you can only tell me of—a shadow on the wall. Why don’t you tell me, Rhode? It would vanish if we looked at it together.”
Grenwood relaxed. The defensive irritability disappeared.
“My dear girl, it’s nothing as elaborate as all that!” He laughed, almost naturally. “Perhaps I am a bit of a sentimentalist. But—one’s past is always a part of one’s present, if you see what I mean. We were close friends as boys. And I suppose I am haunted by what happened to him—especially as he seems to be making a mess of his life.”
Two years later, Raffen’s name was again in the papers, for the same offence, but at a different court. There was no joke by the magistrate and the fine was only forty shillings. The punch came in the last line.
‘Defendant asked for time in which to pay the fine: when this was refused he was removed in custody to serve the alternative sentence of fourteen days.’
So Raffen was penniless!
“I’ve got him now!” he said to himself, hoping that Jill had not read the news report. But Jill had.
“If he’s difficult about taking money, you might be able to use the fact that he could probably have got a hundred or so more for the house, if he had put it up for auction.”
By midday, Grenwood had paid the fine and was waiting for Raffen to be released. In due course, Raffen appeared in the hall, unescorted. He was unshaved and looked dusty. It was a very cold day, but he wore neither overcoat nor gloves. The perpetual sneer was lifted in a wide grin.
“Congratulations, old man!” said Raffen.
“Come and have a spot of lunch,” said Grenwood.
“Splendid!” They left the prison together. “Easy on! You’ve forgotten I can’t walk as fast as you can.”
Chapter Four
Over lunch, in a restaurant near the prison, Raffen told a number of waspish anecdotes about himself in prison. Grenwood, who was learning caution, contributed reminiscences of the Army. As the meal finished Raffen lapsed into silence.
“Now we’ve stopped chattering, we can talk,” said Grenwood.
“‘Little Tommy Tucker must sing for his supper’;” chirped Raffen. “We’ll adjourn to my place. And we certainly can’t talk dry. My cellar, unfortunately, is empty. Let’s see, I owe you two quid for the fine, ten bob for the costs. On Friday I shall receive a cheque for a fiver for some reviews. If you can oblige me with the other two quid ten, I’ll endorse the cheque and post it to you.”
Grenwood paid for the taxi, but Raffen directed it. It stopped outside a wine merchant’s, where Raffen bought two bottles of whisky, which Grenwood carried for some five hundred yards to the stable flat.
The first thing Grenwood noticed was that the flat was now very dirty—the stream of Lotties had dried up. Most of Raffen’s furniture had been replaced with second-hand gimgrackery. They sat in upright chairs at a ramshackle table. Raffen opened one of the bottles. The glasses had to be washed before they could be used.
“Cheers!” exclaimed Raffen. Their eyes met. Each became aware that, after years of repression, the moment of open hostility had arrived. “Rhode, you’re crumpling up, old man! Why don’t you take to drink, too? We’ve got the same complaint. Both afraid of what we might see in the looking glass.”
Grenwood did not intend to be diverted.
“When you offered me your house at valuation—”
“I remember! It was old brandy then. You like it and I liked it. And you liked telling me about Jill. That was a very graceful fade-out, Rhode—until you spoilt it.”
“If I had known it was to be a fade-out, I wouldn’t have accepted your offer of the house. There’s reason to believe that you could have got another five hundred for it at auction. In the circumstances, whether you feel insulted or not, I must insist on repaying the five hundred.”
Raffen laughed, drained his glass and filled up again. Grenwood dropped an envelope on the table.
“In that envelope is a crossed cheque for five hundred pounds, and twenty pounds in currency for your immediate needs. You can repay the twenty, if you like, when you’ve cleared the cheque.”
“Jill put you up to that!” As Grenwood made no answer, Raffen added: “You’re trying to buy. I have nothing to sell you. Drink up, old man.”
“No, thanks. I’m going.”
Grenwood stood up. He picked up his hat, set it down while he put on his gloves, then picked it up again, and put it on.
“Don’t forget your luggage.” Raffen pointed to the envelope lying on the table. “If you leave it there, I shall post it to Jill.”
“You’re broke, Gerald. You’ll starve. They’ll take you to a Poor Law institution where no one will understand your sarcasm. Why won’t you take the money?”
“Because, though a down-and-out, I’m not a crook. Figure this out for yourself, Rhode. When one man says to another, ‘I forgive you’—”
“Forgive me for what?” cried Grenwood.
“—the words mean only, ‘I will not seek vengeance.’ They can’t mean anything else at all. I knew it—when I was fifteen.”
“Forgive me for what?” Grenwood’s voice was dry and shrill.
“I accuse you of nothing. It’s you who’ve plunged yourself into an automatic, self-starting hell. Good lord, man! You’ve got the woman who would have been mine if the fire hadn’t turned me into a gargoyle. And because I get drunk about it, you offer me money to mumble some maudlin abracadabra to free you from the curse. You will never be free.”
Grenwood put one gloved hand on the back of the chair, to steady himself. His hat was awry and his voice was quavery.
“You’re qu
ite right—except that it isn’t any mystical nonsense,” he faltered. “Listen, Gerald, if you can! I have a sort of nervous tic—a cloud in my brain—about that fire. You can clear it up. I’m grovelling to you for the truth, as I’ve grovelled for your friendship—”
“Rats, laddie! If you’d had a cloud in your brain you’d have paid that five hundred quid to a psychiatrist to shift it. I was wrong about the looking glass. You aren’t afraid of what you might reveal to yourself. You’re afraid of what I might reveal to others.”
“You must be drunk already, if you can believe that. The report protects me—”
“Jill will believe anything I tell her about that fire.”
“Leave Jill’s name out of it!”
“We can’t!” asserted Raffen. “You forgot that fire during the war. But you began to remember it again when you held my girl in your arms. Wait till I find my hat—I’ll come with you. And you and I and Jill will soon shift that cloud from your brain for you.”
“I won’t take you to Jill. You’re not sober.”
“Let’s see—yes, I have enough for the taxi to Rubington. Drunk or sober—with you, or without you—the result will be the same. She’ll have a nervous revulsion against you, this time. Reaction in my favour … I never thought of that. What a joke! Jill! The last of the Lotties!”
Grenwood took in the words, but he could see only the perpetual sneer, which his hysteria magnified beyond bearing. He snatched up the unopened whisky bottle as a mallet with which to destroy the perpetual sneer. He went on wielding the mallet until the bottle broke and the whisky splashed over the blood-soaked hair.
He let the neck of the broken bottle fall from his gloved hand. Then he left the flat, shutting the ill-fitting outer door behind him. He had to walk for some five minutes before he found a taxi, near the wine merchant’s. He also noticed that the wine merchant’s clock registered five minutes past three.
In the taxi that was taking him to the office he smelt whisky. Some had splashed on to his shoes. He rubbed them on the mat.
That evening, he gave Jill a substantially truthful account of his day, merely ante-dating his departure from the flat by some three or four minutes.
“I left him a cheque for five hundred, but I doubt whether it will ever be presented. He was very spiteful—even malicious.”
“About—the fire?” asked Jill.
“Oh, no! Nothing about the fire! Nothing at all! Just sneering at our attempts to help him.”
“Funny! I did hear that he had been writing begging letters to people he met at the tennis club here.”
“It doesn’t matter to us. I shall never see him again. It will be easy now to take your advice—I mean, to forget that he ever existed.”
Chapter Five
The body was found the following Monday, five days later, by the rent collector, the newsagent and the milk man having suspended credit. Before Inspector Karslake arrived on the scene the local police had discovered, from gossip, that a ‘tall, well dressed gentleman’ had emerged with deceased from a taxi at the wine merchant’s and had accompanied him to the flat, leaving it at about three o’clock.
Karslake was at Grenwood’s office in the early afternoon. The cheque and the notes, though an odd combination, very strongly suggested that Grenwood had been paying blackmail and had lost his head. Karslake began by asking if he knew Raffen.
“Very well! A personal friend.” He glanced at Karslake’s card. “May I ask—?”
“He has been murdered,” said Karslake and watched the reaction.
There was, in effect, no reaction. Grenwood sat at his desk in total silence.
“When did you last see Raffen?”
“Last Tuesday, At his flat. But I had better tell you the whole unhappy circumstances.” Grenwood began with the meeting at the prison, was precise about the sums of money, the call at the wine merchant’s.
“I was not there very long. Twenty minutes, perhaps. It was about three when I left.”
The frankness of the report, corroborated by his own information, was disappointing for Karslake.
“Had he demanded money of you on any, other occasion?”
“Demanded money!” snapped Grenwood. “He never did any such thing! I thrust it on him, having grave doubts whether he would cash the cheque. I’ve been trying to help him for years. I’ve had to resort to benevolent trickery—and the trickery failed.”
At the blank look on Karslake’s face he went on:
“The poor fellow had a great many disappointments. He took to drink and messed up his career. My wife and I tried hard to find some way of helping him, but his social pride made it all impossible. As to that cheque, we both regarded it as almost a moral debt to him—” Grenwood told him about the house.
Karslake left, with the rueful reflection that the blackmail theory had fallen down, especially as Grenwood had brought his wife into it. The motive obviously had not been robbery. That left only revenge. Raffen evidently had been not a crook but a genteel waster. He might have been mixed up with a tough’s girl.
In a week or two he had rounded up most of the Lotties, including the one who had seen Grenwood seven years ago. Gaining nothing he traced Raffen, with some help from Grenwood, from the time he sold the house in 1919, which seemed far back enough. There was not the ghost of a motive against anyone nor the ghost of a trail. The only finger prints in the flat were those of deceased and Grenwood. There were no prints on the neck of the broken whisky bottle.
After a month’s adjournment, a Coroner’s jury returned ‘murder by a person unknown.’ Grenwood told Karslake that he would be responsible for the funeral expenses and for any other claims that might arise because, as the Inspector already knew, he considered that he had morally owed the deceased five hundred pounds.
Chapter Six
In 1932—two years after the death of Raffen—Detective-Inspector Rason of the Department of Dead Ends received a slip marked ‘re Raffen,’ attached to a visiting card, Lieut-Commander N. Waenton.
“I am a Naval officer,” explained Waenton, somewhat unnecessarily. “I’ve been on a foreign station for three years and didn’t know what had happened to Raffen. I dropped in on the chance that Scotland Yard would be good enough to give me some information.”
“Depends what sort of information you want.”
“I can’t find out whether Raffen left any money, and I thought you might know. I have a small claim against any estate there is. I wouldn’t bother—only, as you’ve probably heard, we’re always broke in the Navy.”
“I can’t tell you off hand.” Rason produced a dossier and rummaged in it. He came upon Karslake’s note that Grenwood would be responsible for reasonable claims and expenses, wondering vaguely what it meant.
“As far as we are concerned,” he said grandly, “it would depend on the nature of the claim. There is provisional—er—provision, if you understand me.”
“It’s an I. O.U. for a tenner.” Waenton produced a pocket case. “And here’s the letter that came with it. He sent the I. O.U. before I sent him the money.”
The letter began ‘Dear old Waenton.’
“You knew Raffen very well, Commander?”
“Not exactly. Hadn’t seen him since we were boys at Charchester. Sort of special bond, in a way. There was a fire—we were in the same dormitory. I and the other boys got out safely, but Raffen was badly scarred. Lost most of one leg, too! As a matter o’ fact I met another man in the East—a planter—not one who had been in the dormitory. Raffen had touched him for twenty-five pounds. I fancy he used an Old Boys list and wrote to everybody.”
“Shouldn’t be surprised!” said Rason untruthfully. “If you care to leave this with us, Commander, I can let you know shortly whether there’s anything doing.”
When his caller had gone, Rason studied the letter. It was an educated version of the usual begging letter, with which he was familiar. Then he dived into the dossier.
“Grenwood says Raffen refused all
offers of money on account of his social pride. He proves it by quoting the dentist, who was to pay Raffen a salary at Grenwood’s cost. But Raffen writes a begging letter, to two men, on the old-school-tie gag. You might say that Grenwood begs Raffen to beg from him and then gets turned down every time. Nerts!”
The next morning he called on the dentist who had been approached by Grenwood, and asked for confirmation.
“The arrangement only lasted a fortnight. Raffen said very bluntly, ‘You haven’t enough patients to need an assistant. Grenwood put you up to this.’ I didn’t admit it, but of course he was right. I never saw Raffen again.”
In the afternoon Rason called at Grenwood’s office.
“I’m following a money trail in the Raffen case, Mr. Grenwood,” he said, almost as if he were speaking to a colleague. “I see a note by Chief Inspector Karslake that you are willing to meet ‘claims,’ whatever that means. Are you willing to meet this?”
He showed him the I.O.U. and the begging letter.
“Good heavens! This is utterly incredible! You can take it from me that letter’s a forgery.”
“I never thought o’ that,” said Rason. “Meaning that man wasn’t a naval officer at all?”
“No, I don’t! I mean that Raffen was friendly with some very low types. When he was drunk he might have spilled enough information for a crook to be able to write that letter.”
“Thanks for the tip, Mr. Grenwood,” said Rason, knowing well that no professional forger would take all that trouble on the chance of receiving ten pounds. Also, the letter was written from Raffen’s address.
So far, he had only the naval officer’s letter, the planter being too nebulous to quote. He sent the letter, with other specimens of Raffen’s handwriting, to be tested for forgery. Then he thought he might as well try other old Charchester boys who happened to live in London.
The difficulty was to get hold of an Old Boys’ list. Charchester was a couple of hours out of London, he took a chance and called on the headmaster, asking for a list and giving his reason.